Chris:Distort zine - This one is a no-brainer. Pretty much anyone interested in aggressive underground music should have a copy (or copies) of this on their shelf. Written by Total Control frontman and UV Race drummer DX, it's a flawless look into the worldwide underground, and without it I don't think I would have discovered bands like Lakes or all of Al Montfort's many projects. After all, it is Australia's only magazine.

Charles Bukowski audiobooks - There's nothing like being hungover in the middle of nowhere and realizing you're still 339 miles from your destination. When keeping my head from falling into my lap feels like a full-time job, putting on either 70 minutes in Hell or 90 minutes in Hell makes me feel like I'm not alone in my poor decision making.

JB:Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World by Nicholas Schou. The original "Hippy Mafia" on a quest to start a "psychedelic revolution," the Brotherhood scattered microdots across the planet like Johnny Appleseed while smuggling shitloads of Afghani hash across oceans and continents concealed in everything from surfboards to VW buses. They helped Timothy Leary escape prison and the United States while getting loaded in every sense of the word.

Michael:Human Landscapes of My Country by Nazim Hikmet - Written over a 13 year prison sentence for political activity. An Epic Poem written in free verse, with it's hero being a composite hero of the turkish people. Stories from waiters, workers, businessmen, army generals, prisoners, dissidents, poets, and peasants come together to explore the failures of modern society, the ways people live in the face of it, and the hope for for its alteration.

Tropical Truth: Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil by Caetano Veloso - Amazing insider look at one of the most intense, contentious, and combustable pop music movements in history. Goes through the development of Tropicalia along with other leftists movements (politics, theatre, film, bossa nova, etc) against the dictatorship, against each other, against sanity. Fascinating to see the public care so much about music that they are willing to fight one another over the authenticity of forms. Deals with the imprisonment and Exile of Veloso and Gilberto Gil.

Max:Jersey Devil by James F. McCloy, Ray Miller Jr. - The Jersey Devil is a fearsome creature birthed from Mother Leeds who has flown around the Pine Barrens scaring people for centuries. This book took two guys to write and tells you absolutely nothing about it other than that for a few months in 1909 many people saw it and offered conflicting reports. A slim volume that should take the average adult 30 minutes to read and offers neither humor nor academic merit.

Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis - The guy only wrote five books! Every one is still in print! Read 'em all! Even True Grit! They're all hilarious! This one's about a society dedicated to ancient mysteries! "The Gluters"! Please don't live your life without Portis, you hapless fuckface!

Richie:The Control of Nature by John McPhee - Far less regionally engaging than his account of our beloved Pine Barrens, but an engaging work nonetheless. Investigates civilization's struggles with this earth. The section on debris slides is a high point and I got a particular kick out of his description of a corpse toboggan race down some mountains in Los Angeles.

Texas Summer by Terry Southern - At press time, I'm still working through this one. A sultry youth named Harold enters adolescence and encounter's its attendent joys and horrors. Set in Texas, so there's some gunplay and horseback riding. An irreverent romp through a carnival with a chum named Crazy Lawrence is a high point at the halfway mark. Appropriately, our young protagonist doesn't appear to be headed toward the orgies found in Southern's more adult-themed works like Candy or Blue Movie.

Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ’n’ Roll Group by Ian F. Svenonius - After you read KLF’s The Manual and make your hit record, consult this book for advice on assembling a touring group.

Be Not Content: A Subterranean Journal by William J. Craddock - A biker in 1960s San Jose discovers acid and turns into a dirty hippie.

Saga of the Swamp Thing by Alan Moore - A plant god with an identity crisis grows psychedelic yams on his own body, feeds them to his girlfriend.

Bomp! 2: Born in the Garage by Suzy Shaw - This is stuffed with fun reprints of old Bomp! articles and tells the story of the early days of zines with amazing names like Mojo Entmooter.

Mount Analogue by René Daumal - Jodorowsky seems to be blowing up these days and it’s worth going back and checking out the inspiration for The Holy Mountain so you can learn how to build yourself an external brain.

Lance Bummer:-Acid Archives by Patrick Lundborg-Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius by Gary Lachman -Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman -Dust and Grooves by Eilon Paz

Greg Bummer:-It’s Kind of a Cute Story by Rolly Crump and Jeff Heimbuch-Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration Into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku-forever reading Electronics for Guitarists by Denton Dailey

Hell's Angel by Ralph "Sonny" Barger - Super interesting read by the man himself. The longtime leader of the Oakland Hell's Angels and later in Arizona describes his life as part of this notorious group. While some myths he dispels, others are confirmed. One Christmas a year or two ago I was given this book and a copy of Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson. Needless to say, I went for the autobiography first. Stories straight from the person who lived them, I gather, perhaps contain more honesty than the sensationalist writings of someone like Hunter S. Thompson.

Anyway, this book is immensely engaging. Barger's delivery, writing style if you will, is quite matter-of-fact and therefore refreshing, to me at least. Equally hilarious as it is, at times, very rough. Despite all the infamy and stigma surrounding Barger and the Hell's Angels, I certainly gained a lot more respect and understanding for him/them... not that they would even care what I think. I would highly recommend this book to just about anyone.

I Am Ozzy by Ozzy Osbourne - Some of my bandmates didn't finish this one, but I did. Yeah, it may seem like the more recent years would be a boring read, what with MTV's The Osbournes and Sharon's cancer all that being the focus of the last handful of chapters, but it's interesting enough to me to read his insights on all that stuff. Lot's of great stories from his childhood and Black Sabbath days. Toward the late 70's and the beginning of his solo career, the memories get fuzzier and fuzzier. No surprise there. What a strange, funny old man. Check it out. The opening alone will give you an idea the kind of laughs you're in for.

Iron Man by Tony Iommi - I know, right? TWO Black Sabbath related autobiographies, and shit... all biographies so far... deal with it. Tony's book is great. I read it on tour in Europe last year when I was out with Bad Sports and Nobunny. For people who actually play music, guitar specifically, and like Black Sabbath, this is the one to read. Iommi talks a lot about songwriting process, which I thoroughly enjoyed. There's a lot of info about his riffs and style as well as album production. Unlike Ozzy, Tony has a much more sober outlook, albeit even though he was just as fucked up as Ozzy. His view of his music as a career I found encouraging. His delivery is very dry and took a few pages to get into the swing of his voice, but once I got it I realized he was definitely not boring. In fact, he's got some of the greatest Black Sabbath stories because he actually remembers a lot of them and because, well, he IS Black Sabbath, hands down. Reading this book also reinforced my love for Dio. To quote Tony Iommi, "I shat myself."

People of the Abyss by Jack London- Guess what? This is also autobiographical. Jack London's fiction has been a favorite of mine since I went to college (can you believe that?). This one is London's first-hand account of visiting London's east end in 1903 as a commoner; as one of "them". By this time, he was already famous. He had money and could travel the world at his leisure. His gentle, ignorant, privileged English friends discouraged him from going into the poor, filthy east end, which they knew little to nothing about. Need I say more? If you read this book and if you're ever in Bethnal Green, go to Britain's First & Best Beigel shop, get yourself a hot-salt-beef bagel (or something else if you're vegetarian, sorry vegans, you're out of luck here) and try to imagine how in the hell this place existed there then. Much like many other "east side" parts of town all over the USA, this place is so very clean compared to how it used to be.

Stu: Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott: Flatland is an 1884 science fiction and social satire set in a 2D land filled with geometric figures and narrated by a square named A. Square. Our hero has a vision of Line Land, a land of one dimension and Space Land, a land of three dimensions in which he is given a tour by a spherical being who he cannot comprehend nor explain. The book left me feeling more open to ideas about other imperceptible dimensions and had me thinking about our plane of existence and our ability to comprehend things we cannot perceive with our senses.

Joe: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami: A young Japanese author, Tengo, sets off a chain of events after rewriting a novella written by a 17-year-old schoolgirl for a literary competition. Her book entitled, Air Chrysalis, tells of a world with two moons that is ruled by the “Little People” who emerge from the mouth of a dead goat. 1Q84 simultaneously profiles the seemingly unrelated life of professional assassin, Aomame. The beauty of this book is its entrenchment in reality, making the moments of surrealism almost shatteringly affecting.

Eric: Wake In Fright by Kenneth Cook: Terrifying story of a young teacher who gets placed at a small school in the rural NSW. He tries to head back to Sydney in the holidays but gets stuck in Bundanyabba (affectionately referred to as the Yabba) where he blows all his money on gambling and beers and ends up getting raped by a pig hunter. Mandatory reading throughout Australian High schools in the 70’s.

One of my favorite books that I own is the science fiction classic The Adventures of The Stainless Steel Rat which is an anthology of the first three books in Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series. I first read it when I was in the 8th grade and the cover is torn off and there are dead bugs from that era or before squashed between the pages. It's about a loner criminal genius who gets drafted as a space secret agent of sorts. He says of his decision to live a life of crime: "There is no future or freedom in the circumscribed life and the only other life is complete rejection of the rules. There is no longer room for the soldier of fortune or the gentleman adventurer who can live both within and outside of society. Today it is all or nothing. To save my own sanity I chose the nothing." Punk never had the chance to ruin my chances of having a normal, healthy adult life. Science fiction had already done the job nicely.

I realise this is for ‘Summer Reading’ column, but you must realise that I am from the land down under, where it is winter now. It’s not all green grass, beach babes and shark attacks this side of the globe. That explains a little as to why I am currently reading Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. One of the darkest books I’ve read and I am only 40 pages through. A lot of Ausmuteants lyrics have the “I suck, but other people suck more” feel, which Dostoyevsky seems to be the master of. Even though nothing that I have read has agreed, I swear that he predicts the Internet happening. Maybe I just read it wrong. Anyway, here’s a list of my favourite books/comics:

Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut: This book changed the way I thought about everything. I rip off Vonnegut’s style, stories, characters and his first name in Ausmuteants. He has a billion amazing short stories crammed into this book that read like he thinks they are disposable. I’ve read this book more than any other one.

Schizo by Ivan Brunetti: “Hey, if you decide to kill yourself, please do not leave this book lying around. The last thing I need is your dumbfuck hillbilly parents trying to sue my ass. I’ve got enough fucking problems as it is.” That was the first Brunetti thing I ever read, the preface to Schizo #2. The series is mainly about why killing yourself is better than living. It is hilarious, brutally honest and makes you hate every subculture in existence. Our first cassette was limited to 33 copies and each one had its own personal insult. A lot of them were taken from Schizo.

Eightball by Dan Clowes: Something in here for everybody. Nice mixture of sweet and gross. Not afraid to tell it how it is. Ever since reading it, I always imagine trying to grab a cops’ gun out of his holster before he can grab it. Also Art School Confidential is the most spot on thing I’ve ever read.

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller: Haven’t read this for years, so kind of hard to write about. But it is one of those books I really struggled with. Took me months to read. Then I re-read it a couple of years later and everything made a lot more sense.

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger: Everybody loves reading diaries about kids who hate phonies. Everybody else is a chump. Dump on the chumps.

David Sedaris - Lets Explore Diabetes With Owls: Everything he has anything to do with is great. This book is no exception. Probably the best observational comedy writer of our time. He's kind of like Jerry Seinfeld in the sense thats he's witty and funny and easy to relate to without being overly offensive. A skill I do not posses.

David Cross - I Drink For a Reason: Just really funny. His stand up is great too.

Johnny Cash - Autobiography with Patrick Carr: Such a solemn, genuine dude. Theres a lot to be learned from a guy who's so independently paved his own way in life through music and never really strayed from himself morally.

Deirdre Barrett - Supernormal Stimuli: Interesting, terrifying, and in a way ~ hilarious book. Basically its about how primal human instincts have progressed so far beyond their evolutionary purpose that we have become extremely destructive to ourselves and everything around us and also just in general how we as a people feel a fundamental need to overcompensate. Something we've hopefully all thought about but probably not enough.

The Essential Schopenhauer: A lot of great, inspiring stuff in here but at the same time I think its so funny and awesome that this brilliant, lonely, sadsack of a man could be completely satisfied with essentially dedicating his entire life to organizing his- at times overly pessimistic but mostly true ideals and agonizingly vivid complaints about human life into different works of literature.

Charlotte Watson:Will You Die For Me? by Charles "Tex" Watson: A great follow up to Manson in His Own Words, this book is for anyone who is interested in the Manson Family. Tex not only takes us through rituals he participated in and murders he committed while a member of the cult family, but also gives an almost aggressively candid, to the moment account of what was going on in his own mind. From ordinary small town Texan to drug dealer to murderer to christian zealot? SHOCKING! CANDID! DARK! REAL!

Natalie Hoffman:Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia by Robert Greenfield - The original Spud Boy's story told through a series of extensive, candid interviews. Feels like reading a ruthless documentary mixed with (what I imagine) being at a live Dead show might haven been like in their heyday. Maybe its comparable to something Errol Morris would do, no obvious written intervention of the author's take on the situation, just well curated interview clips about Garcia's life from childhood through death, with the most focus on his musical enigma of a career. A good one to get way way way way lost in...

Madison Farmer:Flying Saucer's Rock 'n' Roll: Conversations with Unjustly Obscure Rock 'n' Soul Eccentrics edited by Jake Austen - This is a compilation of sorts from interviews that were published in Roctober. I remember one of my first days at Goner, someone came in asking about David Allen Coe and I had no idea who that was. Now I know way too much... Honorable mentions go to Sam the Sham and the Fast. Just about to get into Zolar X.

Alexandra Eastburn:CABINET: a quarterly of art & culture - I have the pleasure of receiving a subscription to this magazine and I enjoy its strange and ridiculously informative variety of subject matter, images, and complimentary postcards immensely. The most current issue's theme, Celebration, includes articles such as "Confetti Uncut: From Phyllobolia to Carnevale," and an interview with Nicola Humble, author of a book entitled Cake: A Global History, who says, "We're not interested in consumption, we're interested in object statuses, and cakes certainly lend themselves to that kind of thinking." Also, in every issue, the reader can expect columns such as "Color" (a favorite of mine), always written by a different author each publication, and usually resulting in some weirdly personal, poetic, and/or historical ramblings loosely or tightly associated with whatever color has been selected by the editors of Cabinet (a fine team of people based in Brooklyn, NY).

BOMB - Another important magazine. Conversations between Artists, Writers, Actors, Directors, Musicians--Since 1981. Damn good. I'm particularly in love with issue #123 / Spring 2013, for it's interview between Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Verne Dawson, and its spread of artworks by Beverly Semmes...just about everything that comes out of this quarterly is, well, the bomb. I highly recommend! Natalie loves it, toooooo :)

Miles:- A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley- The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck- The Road to Los Angeles by John Fante- The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler- The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice - Greil Marcus

Pedrum:- Lapham's Quarterly- What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver- Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era 1961-1965 - Francis French and Colin Burgess- Love: Behind the Scenes: On the Pegasus Carousel with the Legendary Rock Group Love - Michael Stuart

Matthew:- The Dumb Angel Gazette- Southern California: An Island on the Land by Carey McWilliams - Tropical Truth: A Story Of Music And Revolution In Brazil by Caetano Veloso- A Tramp Across The Continent by Charles Fletcher Lummis - The Barefoot Architect by Johan Von Lengen

Holt:Wittgenstein's Blue Book this month. Studies for Philosophical investigations. Understanding "understanding". He defines Philo as curtailing the effect a symbol representation of a fact has on the operations of the fact. Hoping it inspires me towards mythos.

Elijah:Filling in some more gaps in my education before I start grad school in the fall with James R. Munkres' Analysis on Manifolds. Covering the same topics as Rudin's chapters on rigorized multivariable calculus but in more detail and moves towards abstraction of manifolds as the most general place to do calculus. Will read with a pencil and paper in hand.

Gavin:Gulcher by Richard Meltzer. Deconstructed prose, book on culture.

Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan: A disjointed, post-beat trip through this fine land of ours. A very psychedelic book. Best if read while sitting by the river, but it won't help you catch any fish.

12th Planet by Zecharia Sitchin: Do ancient creation myths really tell the story of intelligent life visiting Earth in the distant past? Were humans genetically designed by an advanced race to be enslaved mine gold? Some think Zecharia is a kook, but I think he asks poses interesting questions.

Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke: An inspiring look into a future where, despite the sun going supernova and destroying the Earth, mankind survives by sending seeding ships to distant, habitable planets. It has a hopeful message at a time when it seems like we will destroy the Earth before we get that far.

Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young - Neil wrote a book, I read all but the last 40 pages or so. If you like Neil this is a good time... if you like model trains and electric cars you're in for quite a treat.

White Bicycles by Joe Boyd - Have about 80 pages to go in here, some tid-bits about Pink Floyd, The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention, though the chunk I've read focuses largely on the Newport Folk Festival (nothing wrong with that).

Enjoy the Experience by Johan Kugelberg, Michael P. Daley & Paul Major - This is a book about private press records I got from my girlfriend this past Christmas. Thus far I've spent a couple hours looking at the pictures and read the page about the Shaggs. I have a couple of the records in here, which I find to be pretty exciting. I hope to start actually reading it soon.

A few years past when I was staying over in Chapel Hill, my roommate was the renowned musician, chef, and folklorist Aaron N. Smithers. Aaron told me about the work of Jack "Jaxon" Jackson, a native Texan and one of the original artists in San Francisco's 1960s underground comix scene. Jaxon returned to Texas and spent much of his career painstakingly researching Texas history and making comic book histories from the points-of-view of the Native Americans, Tejanos, and Anglo-American Texians who made that land into the the country and state it is today. I had read Aaron's copies of Comanche Moon and a few others, but I was in Austin last month and came across a beautiful edition of Los Tejanos and Lost Cause that Fantagraphics put out back in 2012. Los Tejanos is particularly good, telling the story of Juan Nepomuceno Seguin, who led Tejano troops against the Mexican Army in the Texas Revolution. Jaxon's beautiful art is in a sort of realistic pen and ink style influenced by old EC horror comics, but the thorough research and storytelling is what makes this book something I'd recommend to everyone. Of course the book makes you think about the problems with nationalism and racism, but also what parts of a story you put in the telling, and what parts you leave out. I left some parts out of this story, but it's a pretty good book.

#1 Sometimes when I take shits I forget to bring a newspaper or magazine, so my last resort is an ingredients list on shampoo or the toothpaste companies phone number. Call them up and ask for free shit. Got a Colgate t-shirt.

#2 When I'm at a show and I'm bored I like to pull out my cellphone and go thru all the notes and song ideas I wrote down at 3 a.m. Some songs about retard nazis in space come out on records. Also talking shit about a band that's boring when your seeing them is funny. To me.

#3 Going to a bookstore and reading every magazine front to back for free is great as well. I usually check out the skateboarder chodes in Thrasher and then read the new XXL magazine to see whatsup with Lil Boosie.

#4 When I'm in school and ain't got shit to do I go on Termbo and see what all the losers are posting. Sometimes I'll peddle my music to 40 year olds. Why not

Zine wise, I stick to MRR for the most part. Maximum Rock N Roll is a very honest and trustworthy zine that endlessly covers artist I am interested in. They will also review anyone that sends in stuff. I think that is really awesome.

Book wise I like to read biographies, and recommend Patti Smith's Just Kids. Reading this book made me realize how much I love Patti as a person beyond just admiring her art. She name drops like a madwoman in the book and it can seem a little pretentious, but she really did know everyone she mentions. If you can get past that, it is a very great read.

I also enjoyed Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad and Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues by Elijah Wald. I love learning anything I can about the history of music that I care about. It is exciting to make connections from bands to bands, artist to artist and see how everything has unfolded and evolved through the years.

I'm always interested in science and psychology reading. An ol' favorite is The Age of Anxiety by W.H. Auden or The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. I read these in my early twenties and thank God! They offered me very intelligent insight on the psychology behind why people join causes or even become fanatics about things. From religion to politics to music scenes across the world, people need to feel they are a part of something. There is a strong inherent need to feel "a part of" in every person. This manifests itself a million different ways with people. Those books introduced me to these concepts. The insight helped me get through my twenties without so much judgment on people that I would see fall into causes or affiliate themselves politically in ways that I didn't personally agree with. Especially when it would bleed into our music scenes in Atlanta. I can find empathy almost across the board because I understand everyone just seems to follow that drive from inside to be a part of something. I am not exempt from this. I thrive best and get a sense of purpose when I am affiliated with a group of people that share my values and goals. There is strength in numbers!

I have never really had any interest in graphic novels or most fiction. I likes to keep it REEAAAL.

Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories - Hemingway was rad. His semi-autobiographical stories set in parts of Michigan that we grew up around are sweet to read (hard-nosed existentialism dotted with fishing and drinking).

A Song of Ice and Fire - Fuckin get with it.

Rolling Stone’s Commemorative Pink Floyd Edition - Our friend Brad left it in our touring vehicle so it’s been read front to back like 15 times. We stand behind Gilmour.

Juggling school, work, and rock'n'roll has limited my recreational reading mostly to Pornhub video titles and X-Files episode descriptions on Netflix, but the last analog book I read was Jesus' Son by Dennis Johnson. It's a book of short stories about degenerate junkies and drunks. Most authors fuck up drug writing by trying to portray themselves as 2nd-rate Hunter S. Thompsons, but Johnson nails the authentic desperation and masochism that comes with being a true pile-of-shit drug addict. Most of the stories made me laugh, but I'm not sure if they'd be as funny to those outside the hard-drug community. I guess if these stories don't seem funny, then maybe you should start doing worse drugs.

What we read? I think this must be some kind of joke. Most of what we read is stapled rather than glued or bound, but here we go. IF by some odd chance you found us with our noses buried in something it would most likely be Conan comics, old Mad magazines, Robocop fan fiction, issues of Angry Youth Comics, The Real Life Fonzie's Guide to Real Life, or novelizations of major motion pictures. We are also big fans of the works of John Grisham and Michael Crichton. That being said I know right now Erik is getting his mind blown by the wasteland in Stephen King's Dark Tower, Sammy finished the Game Of Thrones books (I know this because he always wants to tell us what happens next), and I think Scott mainly reads the ticker on SportsCenter. I mostly only read reviews of my own records, but just ordered Clubber Lang's Predictions of Pain and am really looking forward to reading it.